Catherine Nicolaou, External Affairs and Marketing Manager, Sacred Wind Communications

Juniper Enables Sacred Wind Communications to Bridge the Digital Divide for the Navajo Nation

@ Juniper Wired
A photograph of a desert landscape with just a few buildings and a bright blue sky is shown with the Juniper Networks logo and tagline, Driven by Experience, above it in white type.

Delivering blazing-fast broadband to a rugged and remote part of New Mexico.

Headquartered in New Mexico, Sacred Wind Communications provides telephone and high-speed internet to rural Navajo communities spanning more than 3,200 square miles through rugged territory covering deserts, mountains, and canyons. Here, Sacred Wind’s Catherine Nicolaou talks about how the company relies on Juniper to help bring affordable yet high-quality broadband to its customers.

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You’ll learn

  • How Juniper brought, for the first time, high-speed broadband to secluded parts of New Mexico

  • How Juniper worked with Sacred Wind Communications to connect underserved Navajo Nation communities

  • How Juniper bridged the digital divide for remote communities and extended a digital lifeline

Who is this for?

Network Professionals Business Leaders

Host

Catherine Nicolaou
External Affairs & Marketing Manager, Sacred Wind Communications

Transcript

0:00 [Music]

0:03 my name is catherine igolao i'm the

0:05 external affairs and marketing manager

0:07 for sacred wind communications

0:09 headquartered in yatahai new mexico we

0:12 provide telephone and high-speed

0:14 internet to portions of 22 navajo

0:17 chapters in the eastern agency of

0:20 northwest new mexico so sacred wind

0:22 communications has a serving territory

0:25 that's about 3 200 square miles

0:28 and it's it's very sparsely populated

0:31 there's about

0:32 on average two households maybe per mile

0:36 you see the poverty rate and our

0:38 territory is 49

0:42 that means that we have customers that

0:43 sometimes have to decide between putting

0:46 food on the table and having access to

0:49 the internet

0:51 we look at

0:53 any type of technology that that we can

0:55 get to be able to serve them we want to

0:58 be able to make it high class service

1:00 world-class service but also at an

1:03 affordable price for our customers and

1:06 so from the very beginning sacred wind

1:09 has always been a technology agnostic

1:11 company we're not afraid of being on the

1:13 cutting edge and we often trial

1:15 solutions that are not even proven yet

1:18 but in an effort to deliver that

1:20 world-class service to our customers our

1:23 experience with juniper networks

1:25 is that they understand and have a

1:27 passion for helping small carriers like

1:30 sacred wind in connecting unserved and

1:33 underserved communities

1:35 community is everything to us the entire

1:38 reason why sacred wind was created 15

1:40 years ago is to impact the community

1:42 that we serve on the navajo nation and

1:45 these are individuals and families that

1:47 have been long forgotten

1:48 so it means that we are living out our

1:50 mission in a way that accomplishes what

1:52 we set out to do

1:54 it allows future generations of new

1:56 mexicans located in northwest new mexico

1:59 to participate in society in a way that

2:02 perhaps

2:04 you know previous generations were not

2:05 able to so it's an incredible honor for

2:08 all of us

2:12 [Music]

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